I think this is a direct result of our colleges encouraging mediocrity and making it very difficult for advanced students to, well, "advance". Colleges are built around helping out the most mediocre students get a passing grade, and just letting the gifted students learn on their own. It is the same thing that happens in our high schools.
My girlfriend is just finishing her degree in Education, and it is horrible just how bad it has gotten. They have dozens of programs designed to helping out disadvantaged children and poor performing students, while the gifted students are left to their own devices. My boss is from Europe, and their schools (at least in Sweden in the 1980s) encourage their best and brightest. The gifted students are the ones that are going to make the biggest difference in the workplace, while the struggling students are simply going to fill up the jobs that dont take much skill.
If we want to keep up in a technologically advanced world, we have to start caring about our gifted students, not just helping the below average ones pass school.
When did Bush ever unjustly invade another country? Iraq went against the deals of our cease fire in 1991 and had been breaking them for over a decade. And the Taliban were harboring terrorists that killed over 3000 Americans. I do not see any unjust military actions. You can possibly argue that those atrocities were not worth going to war over, but you cannot argue that they were unjust. --
If you had lived in that country, you would have been there believing and fighting for this crazy leader too
Just because I agree with this US president doesnt mean that I would blindly follow any US president. I think Clinton was a bad president, not horrible but I think his shortcomings outweighed his strengths. I was appalled by how Clinton handled situations like Somalia and Iraq, just as I was appalled at how the UN has been dealing with Iraq since the first war ended. I do not agree with Bush because he is my President, I agree with him because I believe his actions are the correct ones (when it comes to foriegn policy).
This President did not spend time waiting because Europe is afraid of action. Europe failed after World War I and caused another major war, the U.S. is not going to sit on it hands while Europe fails again. Europe seams to have failed to learn from its past mistakes and is again choosing inaction instead of direct intervention. A few well placed soldiers in 1935 would have saved millions of lives, but they were as cowardly then as they are now.
I do not even agree with all of the reasons why this administration went to war. All I agree with is the actual decision. If my leader was crazy and invading countries that it had no business invading, then I would definetly not be defending him. I never said that you shouldnt doubt or question your government. It is just that this administration's foreign policy has been adequate in my opinion. We may not be making friends, but if they refused to do anything before the Iraq war then who really cares if they are still not doing anything now.
I see USA use the Hitler card way too often and completely wrong. Just recently the leader of Iran was called a potential Hitler. It's redicilous. Hitler was dangerous only because he lead a big country and the strongest army in the world.
First off, Hitler did not have control of the strongest military in the world. The German military was crippled after WWI. The Nazis rebuilt it though, and after a few years it did become the strongest military. His party did not inherit a strong military, they created it. The wisdom that comes from Nazi Germany isnt that there are evil people out there, everyone knows that. The wisdom that can be learned from Nazi Germany is that when a country becomes unjustly militant against its neighbors, they must be stopped immediatly. No appeasment, no unnessarily long diplomatic efforts. Reaction must be immediate, and final.
America and Russia didnt hold back their nukes because they were scared that the UN would yell at them. They had restraint because they knew the other country would annihilate them. If either country actually believed their opponent was skiddish, the Cuban Missile Crisis, Vietnam War, Afghan War (Russia's, not ours) would have went a bit differently. Countries like Iraq, Iran, North Korea, etc. dont care about the UN because they know how useless it has become.
The only thing worse than committing an evil act is ignoring one. --
Well which do you believe? You can't really say we went to war for some benevolent ideology, and then say it probably wasn't for the reasons you are so proudly expressing...
I can and do believe both. There is nothing mutually exclusive about going to war for an ideology and going to war for money.
The United States does not go to war every time it finds a way to make money. There must also be a good reason for that war.
I understand that no matter how bad a regime is, the United States will probably not act if the regime does not affect us economically. It takes alot of money to fund a war, and money does not grow out of ideologies. Good things can happen in this world even if money was their primary motivator.
I employee a number of people at my company, and I pay well. My employee's lives are better because of their job, since they are rarely able to get similar paying jobs in the area with their experience/skills. But they only have a job because they can make me more money than I pay them. If my salesman cost me $5k a month, but only brought in $4k a month in sales, he would be out of a job. I consider myself a good boss, but I do not just hand out money.
The ends never justify the means
Are you serious? Is it 2am where you live, and is this just the rambling of someone who is tired? When you go to college you are spending about 4 years of your adult life virtually unemployed so that you can get a better job when you are done. You are a drain on the economy for 4 years, in the hopes that afterwards you will be able to better serve society. Most people think that the ends justify the means there.
Many people watch what they eat and/or exercize even if they do not particularly enjoy it. But they want to be in shape and live longer. So they must think that the ends justify the means.
The primary motivation is often monetary when you are talking about large entities such as governments or corporations. But since that is always constant, it is the secondary motivations that are important. A company exploiting workers to make more money is bad. A company that pays their workers well to increase loyalty and performance so that they can make more money is good. See the difference?
By that same logic, North Korea spending money on military while starving its citizens is bad. But America spending money on military to liberate other countries that we have other interests in is good.
Anyone who in this day and age still believes that humans did not evolve will never be convinced. They are incapable of realizing they are wrong if they havent already.
If this is a missing link, it creates 2 new ones. Instead of "what species comes between 'Ardipithecus ramidus' and 'Australopithecus afarensis'", you have both "what species comes between 'Ardipithecus ramidus' and 'Australopithecus anamensis'" and "what species comes between 'Australopithecus anamensis' and 'Australopithecus afarensis'".
We do not need these missing peices. It is always great to find more about evolution, but it really doesnt help prove it any more than the information we already had. --
It is warfare, and it sucks, but it is how it needs to be done.
Ok. So, what's the next step? "It is warfare, and it sucks, but we need to torture people for information that may save our soldiers' lives - it is how it needs to be done".
You always have to find some way to strike a balance. Everything can be taken to extremes. It is good to eat fruits and vegetables, but if you only eat fruit then you will be very unhealthy. It is good to give your body rest, but it is bad to sleep 21 hours a day.
It is good to incarcerate POWs because some of them may be innocent, instead of kill them in the theatre of war. If there were some magical way to detect truth then we wouldnt have to make any innocent people suffer. But we sure cannot let all the POWs go free just because some of them might be innocent.
America did not want to be attacked at 9/11, and we did not want Iraq to invade Kuwait and then ignore the UN resolutions for over a decade. We are doing everything in our power to rectify mistakes done by both ourselves and other countries. And jailing POWs without a trial for a few years is not a terrible act given the circumstances. --
In other words, "they" set US policy, "they" control the limits of our democracy, "they" have already won.:'(
That is such a rediculous statement that I wasnt even going to respond until another idiot actually decided to mod it insightful.
Does a murderer set our judicial policy because they are sent to jail or killed? His actions (killing someone) directly led to being executed, so they must have set our policy. That is nonsence. If it was up to me, I would like to never send anyone to jail and never impede on anyone's freedom. But as soon as someone decides to murder someone, we must act. We cannot just let a serial killer stay at large. The same goes for theft, fraud, etc.
Wars do not end overnight. WWI and WW2 took years. It is not unreasonable to keep POWs incarcerated for years without a trial process. And if we do find out that they were wrongly jailed, then they are let free. It has happened already where we have released people after a few years when we found out they were innocent. They were casualties of war, but lucky enough that they did not die like other innocent people in wartime.
We must refuse to play nice until everybody loves us again!
We are playing very nicely, and that is why it is taking so long. In World War II we just carpet bombed cities until they stopped fighting. In Japan we used incindiery bombs since we knew most of their homes were wooden and easily flamable. Im sure the insurgencies would be alot less if every time we were attacked, everyone in a 5 mile radius of the attack was killing in a carpet bombing mission. But we do not want unneccessary death, unlike the terrorists we are fighting. We think it is better to jail a few innocent people than to kill tens of thousands in the way war used to be faught.
Oh, yes. Someone else invaded Afghanistan and Iraq without international support and under the condemnation of the UN. And you just, uh, went along to help?
No, the above country you mentioned was the United States (and yes, I did get the sarcasm). But we still did not begin the hostilities. As far as Afghanistan, do you remember 9/11 at all? If the Taliban was not going to assist us in apprehending Al Qaeda then we needed to remove them from power to attack Al Qaeda.
And with Iraq, they began hostilities when they invades Kuwait. We were able to end the fighting very quickly based on Iraq's surrender, but they never followed through with their surrender. Saddam blaintantly showed how useless and irrelevent the U.N. was for over a decade, and the U.S. had enough of it. As far as I am concerned, weapons of mass destruction were barely even a consideration. We had plenty of other reasons to invade again. It is unfortunate that a President has to mislead the public because our population is so uneducated that they will not support the real reasons why we should have went to war.
The United States could not longer consider itself a moral country if it let the UN decide our policy. Letting countries commit genocide and oppress their own people should not be allowed. And the UN has shown that they do not have the will to stop immoral societies. The United States have done their fair share of evil acts in the past, such as wiping out the Native Americans, but we no longer tolerate our government committing genocide. The next step is to stop further atrocities in other parts of the world.
And the principles on which your country was founded be damned.
Our country was founded by rich men who didnt feel like having someone (ie Government) tell them what to do. They were not the moral giants that we think of them as today. It is similar to old men saying "back in my day, things were better." We like to think fondly of these men, but realize that they were not much different than politicians today. They had slaves and exploited the poor just like everyone else back then. They created the electoral system just so that they could control the election process in case the public was voting "correctly". John Adams passed many embarrassing acts, such as the Sedition Act that jailed newspaper editors that supported the Republican Party.
We live in a different world than it was back in the 1700s. I for one think that in our day and age we need to me MORE moral than our founding fathers. And that means not hiding from the problems in this world. Governments such as the Taliban and Saddam's Baath Party should not be allowed to exist. No government is perfect, but any rational person can see when a regime is simply evil.
I think that it is abhorrent that the world has allowed countries such as North Korea to oppress its people for so long without intervention. America should not be ashamed of going to war with Iraq, we should be ashamed of not going to war with countless other regimes over the past century that have done far worse than Saddam. The Iraq War is one shining example of a moral country finally standing up for their ideals. It is unfortunate that it was probably done more for money than for our ideals, but I doubt any major action in all of history has ever had anything but money as its primary driving force.
They will get justice. They will get it as soon as the insurgents stop fighting. Justice is a nice ideal, but when people are dying it has to be put in perspective. Is it justice if a soldier gets killed because the guys who are supposed to be watching his back are testifying in a courthouse in the green zone?
The convenience of our soldiers is ALOT more important than justice for captured POWs. It is warfare, and it sucks, but it is how it needs to be done. --
But while we are still at war with Al Qaeda we do not need to determine for sure if they are guilty. We cannot just fly our soldiers back from the front lines every time the need to testify. Any trials do not need to occur until Al Qaeda officially says "We give up" and turn themselves in (and follows through with it).
Until then I am sure that innocent people are suffering along side the guilty. But it is no different than any other form of collateral damage in warfare. We did not start the hostilities, and we will continue to fight until our enemies give up.
If they want to keep fighting for generations, their "soldiers" will remain incarcerated for generations. Innocents get killed in war, and they also get jailed unfairly. As soon as the insurgents stop fighting then everyone will get the fair treatment that they deserve. --
Do you want our military to bring soldiers back from the front lines for a trial for every single person they detain? While that might be nice, I would also like a million dollars a year in salary.
When to quit tweaking the game. When to quit adding shit. When to quit revising it. When to quit the project period.
As I recall, these attributes are considered to be a good thing within the Open Source community.
Yeah, but think of where Linux would be if Linus was still working on it alone at home because it didnt quite have all of the features that he wanted. It wouldnt be nearly as far along. --
Most programmers complain that people in management don't know anything about coding and that they are hindering development. But now you are saying that if talented people ever become management then the company will start spitting out poor quality products.
I may or may not be a great programmer, but my boss thinks that I am. He ended up making me President of his company so that he could take advantage of my help in running other programmers in the company. I may be twice as good as anyone else in the company, but I am far more useful managing programmers than actually coding myself. My past experience and knowledge of programming makes me far more competent to set schedules, timetables, distributing jobs, etc. than someone who has never worked as a programmer.
I think it is absurd to think that a company should keep their best people in low level coding positions and only let "management types" with no knowledge of what your company is producing make all of the decisions. I applaud IBM for expecting their best people to have good management and people skills. You may not like the products that IBM produces, but they dont seam to be going bankrupt from what I can tell.
There's much more to life and human relationships than sexual expression.
I fully agree with that, but you definetly cannot take sexual expression away from any age group past puberty. Once a boy starts developing arm pit hair and voice starts cracking, they are ready for sexual expression. We have 2 choices: Have our 12 and 13 year old kids start having sex, or give them some other outlet.
We provide sports for kids so that they do not start beating each other up to establish alpha male status. Most bullies I knew (unlike what is shown in movies) were not the jocks. They were kids from low income families with no other outlet. Sports give males the ability to exhibit superiority over each other in a physical way without killing each other. Magazines such as Playboy (and now places like Playboy.com) give the same males an outlet for their sexual urges without resorting to having sex every other day.
I am not saying that porn should be the final answer. Dads should not skip the "Birds and Bees" talk and instead just hand their son a stack of Hustler magazines. But porn is not something to be avoided. It is actually healthy in a society that does not think children should be sexually expressing themselves at 13.
I do not see how seeing pornography is a problem at all for our youth. While 9 may be a little too young, I definetly do not see the problem with 11 or 12 year olds viewing it.
We allow our children to see violent imagery everywhere, from our games to the news. But we are so violently against sexual imagery. I know that as a child I was much more curious about girls and sex before I finally discovered both pornography and masturbation. I was able to be a functioning male teenager because I did not need to be overly preocupied with sex.
Would you rather more children start having sex at the age of 12? Or would you rather them find some pornographic pictures online and spend some "quality" time alone in their bedroom once every few nights? Humans are wired to start having sex long before 18, so we either give them an outlet or start having alot more teen pregnancies.
Wait a minute. This guy was not writing his senior year political science thesis, it was just a post to Slashdot. Asking for references is okay, but saying that his post is incomplete just because he didnt cite his sources is wrong. If everyone did that, my 30" monitor wouldnt be enough to see 2 posts on the same screen.
"The government does not intervene when there is a labor surplus" Why not? Does it need to? What suggestions do you have?
He answered all of your questions in his post. He said that a free market corrects itself without intervention. He said that the government doesnt have to do anything except for to foster the free market system. It is okay to ask him to elaborate or give proof, but it was not an incomplete post. He couldnt possibly cover every single angle of the issue in one Slashdot post.
You can respond and ask questions without attacking his logical reasoning skills.
politicians attempt to damage" Again, use of emotional 'damage' without any reasoning behind why it's 'damaging' and not, say, 'fixing'.
The reason he used the word "damage" instead of "fixing" is because he does not believe that it is fixing the problem. He believes that it is damaging our economy. And he has given reasoning for why, it is because it floods our workforce with extra workers that the workforce did not need. Which then increases unemployment or at least lowers wages.
You can say that he is wrong, but at least give examples of why. You attack him for not explaining himself, but you do not even try to explain yourself. You are simply attacking him with no basis for your arguments.
Sounds alot like the pot calling the kettle black.
You can still consider it a "free market" even if you have laws that inhibit immigration. Immigration laws have nothing to do with an American Free Market. It might inhibit a Global Free Market, but that isnt what the parent poster was referring to.
By your argument, to have a "truly free market" you would have to be allowed to kill your competition without legal recourse. If laws are in place to stop you from killing the competition, then it wouldnd be a free market. --
Sounds alot like someone who is horrible at gambling. While playing against "The House" is definetly mostly luck, playing against other gamblers is a game of skill. Luck exists, but that is true of anything. No one would accuse Michael Jordan of just being lucky since he didnt make 100% of his shots. No one said "that was just luck" whenever he made a jump shot.
Basically, these are assumptions, which fail to take into account numerous other factors. It's not science.
Your comments are purely based on anecdotal evidence; mostly your own experiences. That is what makes your comments meaningless. It is like saying I have a friend who was shot 10 times but lived, so bullets are not deadly. When in college I minored in history, and took three 300 level and two 400 level classes. None of them even approached any of my 200 level math classes in difficulty. I could probably pass most 400 level liberal arts classes if I signed up for one now (other than some Liberal Arts degrees such as Physics), but I doubt I could pass a 400 level AeroNautical Engineering class without taking alot of prerequisite classes first. There is some more anecdotal evidence for you since you love it so much.
Doing studies on thousands of individuals and normalizing the data and analyzing it IS SCIENCE. Your comments are not. --
You talk about the difference between different tribes and the differences between Asian-Americans and other Asians, but those are the exact distinctions that should for the most part be disregarded. No one is rating cultures, they are rating genetic differences in races. There is a world of difference between an African and European Caucasion; and the difference between two Nigerian tribes. It is like comparing Black Labrador Retrievers and Chocolate Labs, and then saying it is similar to the difference between a Labrador and a Dalmation.
Human races, as far as we can tell, are much more similar to each other than dog races are. But there are real genetic differences. That is why black families do not have white babies. To think that we have all of these physical differences but no other internal genetic differences is very naive. Different races broke off from eachother for tens of thousands of years, more than enough time for very minor differences in intelligence to evolve. And the difference between a 100 and 80 IQ is very minor when you consider just how intelligent humans are over other species.
More relevantly, do you personally know anything about the University of Witwatersand?
While I have never visited the university, you can find quite a bit about a college simply from the internet. I can find a listing of all of their facilities and faculty members. They have biographies, along with research that they have done. I can even read their University Press from the internet. And I have yet to even find a non-religious based university that is not liberal. Colleges produce pseudo-intellectuals faster than they print diplomas.
You do sound like a not much travelled, pseudo intellectual racist looking for heavy credentialled cover
While I am not well traveled, I do have many friends that were born in other countries (and some that still live overseas). My family has a military backround and is very well traveled, although I was born with asthma and was black balled when I tried to sign up for the Marines. But I am not trying to sell you on any research that I have done, so my past has nothing to do with this argument. In fact, just having an emotional attachment to this issue (such as being an African yourself) clouds any objective judgment. It is similar to why psychologists are not supposed to have emotional feelings for their patients.
Regardless of what you believe, I have no racist leanings at all. While I have to admit I am mostly only attracted to Caucasian women, my sexual preferences do not mean that I have any negative feelings towards different races. I have many Asian friends and had many African American friends when in college. I am willing to accept my faults, the faults of my country, and any possible faults of my race in general. You do not see me complaining about how these IQ tests unfairly give Asian Americans an edge.
I am not even saying that Africans are on dumb. As you said in your post, IQ tests are not conclusive and do not rate all forms of intelligence. What they can show, however, is that there are probably differences in intelligence among different races. There could be certain tests that Africans do better than Europeans, I have simply not seen or heard of any tests that show this.
Not once did I uses words such as "inferior" or "smarter" in my entire post. I was simply stating that based on almost ALL available data, there seams to be an inherent difference in how different human races think. And so far no one has been able to show that it is purely cultural, in fact all available research is showing the exact opposite.
SO this is really a test that tests innate intelligence? really? So education/learning can't help to develop quick thinking or problem solving or visual recognition? How do you determine something is innate intelligence or a learned skill?
Like I said in my post, these were college educated students in South Africa. While their education might not be up to par with the U.S. or Europe (that is debatable with how bad our education system is), it isnt so bad that they arent picking up basic problem solving techniques.
And these tests were untimed, so quick thinking didnt play into it.
I could go on all day but it already reminds me of why I quit psychology, too many variables in the world.
So as soon as something becomes difficult you quit? Did you quit multi-variable calculus because it wasnt as simple as just using the power rule? Just because something is incredibly complex doesnt mean you shouldnt at least try to understand it.
These recent studies being done are mostly for the purpose of debunking the belief that some races may have different intelligence levels. It is very hard to believe, so most people assume it is wrong. Just because some American Revolutionary wrote down the words "All men are created equal" doesnt make it a scientific fact.
So far no one has actually been able to find any data that debunks it. They may do it, just like we may find out that there really is an alien race on Mars that we havent found yet. But until we find any actual data to lead us to a different conclusion, you should give at least some weight to the current conclusions. --
Can you show me any evidence that hair colour - probably as significant a genetic trait as skin colour - has any other ramifications apart from likelihood of sunburn?
Are you honestly comparing hair color to racial differences? How many parents that both have red hair give birth to black haired children compared to the number of black couples who give birth to a white baby? Racial differences are alot deeper than the color of your skin.
College education perhaps not, but you'd have to be wilfully stupid not to see that early childhood training on puzzles wouldn't have a significant impact.
Like I said in my post, this study was done on college students in South Africa. These are not your poor homeless africans. They have had schooling, and have had access to plenty of stimuli similar to puzzles. Most of these studies are done on African college students because most of the studies are being done by African colleges.
> It is documented that Sub-Saharan Africans have an average IQ of about 70.
References, please.
The GP poster actually gave one reference to such studies in their post, so I hardly thought it was necessary to list them again. It is past midnight now so I do not feel like finding more, but do a google search with terms such as "IQ" & "Africa" and you will find studies on different countries and probably plenty of other links.
All I'll say is that I'm very glad you were on the other side of the atlantic, shooting and driving, when you were 11.
I grew up on a farm, so I started driving lawn mowers and tractors at the age of 8. I started driving trucks at about 10, when I could reach the pedals. People underestimate the abilities of children all of the time. And I was not an exception, most of my neighbors learned to drive at similar ages because we had access to relatively safe country roads.
I hope you'll stay there until you grow up.
This is just more nonsense that has nothing to do with the discussion at hand. Whether you could even find a general definition for what it means to be "grown up", it doesnt much to do with IQ scores among various races. Maybe your definition of "growing up" is to learn to ignore all available evidence and instead just believe whatever makes you feel better about yourself.
Make all of the excuses that you want about how all of these liberal studies still arent liberal enough for you. These are groups whose only goal is to try to debunk the belief that some races have lower IQs than others, but they have only reinforced the previous research.
If you are African, none of these comments are meant to be derogatory towards you. Remember these are just averages, it doesnt mean that any individual couldnt have a very high IQ.
but i think the only thing those surveys prove is that the method of calculating iq favors those who are educated
Racial biology has been proven a pseudo-science for quite some time
These beliefs are the exact kind of "politically correct" thinking that holds back research in the area of human intelligence. People are so adverse to labeling each other that they ignore real research that hopes to expand our knowledge of human intelligence. How can we possibly think that different human races could evolve to look so different but did not evolve differently at all internally?
The studies that the GP post mentioned are very, VERY numerous; but I will mention one here. A study done by the University of the Witwatersrand (a liberal college in South Africa) tested hundreds of students using Raven's Matrices. Raven's Matrices are the best known and most researched culturally-reduced tests that we have for rating IQ. They use diagrammatic puzzles with a missing part. You could hardly argue that any level of college education could help you find the missing peice of a puzzle.
It is documented that Sub-Saharan Africans have an average IQ of about 70. African university students scored an average of 84 on these tests, which is about 15 points higher than average which is the same as it is in America and Europe. Highly selected engineering students with extensive training in math and science scored about 103. This is also similar to Europe and America, where engineering students in college generally have IQs of about 15 points higher than liberal arts majors. This doesnt mean that their more intense schooling made them smarter, just that they generally must be smarter to even attempt a more intellectually intense career.
People think of sub-70 scores on an IQ test to mean mental retardation. That is only because among caucasions, people with such low IQ scores generally are retarded as a result of in utero complications. They also often have visible deficiencies in motor skills and speech. Sub-70 IQ South Africans are often technically normal, because that is not a very low score for them.
Thinking of it in terms of mental age, an adult with an IQ of 70 has the mental age of an 11 year old. I could drive, work on the farm, and shoot a gun before the age of 11. Having an IQ of 70 does not make you retarded, it is just that there is a strong correlation in America that people with low IQ are also retarded.
All of this culturally biased nonsense is just that: nonsense. Early IQ test were definetly culturally biased, but that has been fixed for the most part. Asians generally score better on American IQ tests than Americans do, so how could they possibly be culturally biased? And many tests, such as Raven's Progressive Matrices, have nothing to do with education level either.
You cannot fix a problem until you accept that it exists.
Surely, I've made clear what the morally right decision would have been.
No, you have only made it clear what YOU think the morally right decision is. I for one believe that you are wrong. If you actually believe that inaction is the best policy, then go ahead and close your eyes and hope the problem goes away.
I for one think that we should be actually trying to help the Chinese population instead of ignoring them.
I dont really think that the increase in violence in our society has anything to do with us glorifying it. I think it has everything to do with the information age, and by that I include television and other forms of media that even today are increasing their immersion into our society. The wealth of information that is at our finger tips from the internet to the news has caused a desire for realism that just started emerging over the past few decades.
It is our constant need for realism in our media and more specifically in our entertainment that is causing this violence. And it isnt because we like violence, it is because the world is violent. To accurately depict reality, many forms of media must be VERY violent. We no longer accept propoganda filled films that paint war as a heroic endeavor where the heroes never die and there are no blood and guts in the attractive hero's hair at the end of a battle.
The Vietnam War was the first time that our society really started to remember how "graphic" the world really is. America is so sheltered from the violence that is known in other parts of the world that we forget how wonderful it is that we can go to work every day without worrying about stepping on a land mine. Sure we have our own crime, but I doubt many people living in some African countries would give up the opportunity to trade places with us.
Even during the Vietnam War, we were still reluctant to accept the world for what it really is. It took a long time for our media to accuratly depict the world around us. But today we expect realistic movies and games. Sure there can be demons and angels and monsters, but the movie must be believable once you accept that these things exist in the scope of that particular movie.
Sure there are movies like "Kill Bill" that push the edge as far as gore and violence go, but there are always areas of media that push the envelope. Movies are effected by our culture as much if not more than movies effect us. Like you said in your post, movies like "Rambo" were at the extreme in the 80s. But now that all movies are at least as realistically depicted as Rambo, movies must go a little farther to be extreme enough for a certain audience.
Violence is not a good thing, but it should not be avoided. America is still too isolated from the world; our media is one of the few outlets that show us the things that many conservative people dont want us to see. I am not liberal by any means, but I also do not think we should shield ourself from reality just because it makes us feel better. I dont think we should ever stop trying to shock the public with images from media such as war movies. Maybe we will finally stop thinking issues like abortion are such a big deal when there are countries out there committing genocide.
Slashdot Mirror
I think this is a direct result of our colleges encouraging mediocrity and making it very difficult for advanced students to, well, "advance". Colleges are built around helping out the most mediocre students get a passing grade, and just letting the gifted students learn on their own. It is the same thing that happens in our high schools.
My girlfriend is just finishing her degree in Education, and it is horrible just how bad it has gotten. They have dozens of programs designed to helping out disadvantaged children and poor performing students, while the gifted students are left to their own devices. My boss is from Europe, and their schools (at least in Sweden in the 1980s) encourage their best and brightest. The gifted students are the ones that are going to make the biggest difference in the workplace, while the struggling students are simply going to fill up the jobs that dont take much skill.
If we want to keep up in a technologically advanced world, we have to start caring about our gifted students, not just helping the below average ones pass school.
--
When did Bush ever unjustly invade another country? Iraq went against the deals of our cease fire in 1991 and had been breaking them for over a decade. And the Taliban were harboring terrorists that killed over 3000 Americans. I do not see any unjust military actions. You can possibly argue that those atrocities were not worth going to war over, but you cannot argue that they were unjust.
--
If you had lived in that country, you would have been there believing and fighting for this crazy leader too
Just because I agree with this US president doesnt mean that I would blindly follow any US president. I think Clinton was a bad president, not horrible but I think his shortcomings outweighed his strengths. I was appalled by how Clinton handled situations like Somalia and Iraq, just as I was appalled at how the UN has been dealing with Iraq since the first war ended. I do not agree with Bush because he is my President, I agree with him because I believe his actions are the correct ones (when it comes to foriegn policy).
This President did not spend time waiting because Europe is afraid of action. Europe failed after World War I and caused another major war, the U.S. is not going to sit on it hands while Europe fails again. Europe seams to have failed to learn from its past mistakes and is again choosing inaction instead of direct intervention. A few well placed soldiers in 1935 would have saved millions of lives, but they were as cowardly then as they are now.
I do not even agree with all of the reasons why this administration went to war. All I agree with is the actual decision. If my leader was crazy and invading countries that it had no business invading, then I would definetly not be defending him. I never said that you shouldnt doubt or question your government. It is just that this administration's foreign policy has been adequate in my opinion. We may not be making friends, but if they refused to do anything before the Iraq war then who really cares if they are still not doing anything now.
I see USA use the Hitler card way too often and completely wrong. Just recently the leader of Iran was called a potential Hitler. It's redicilous. Hitler was dangerous only because he lead a big country and the strongest army in the world.
First off, Hitler did not have control of the strongest military in the world. The German military was crippled after WWI. The Nazis rebuilt it though, and after a few years it did become the strongest military. His party did not inherit a strong military, they created it. The wisdom that comes from Nazi Germany isnt that there are evil people out there, everyone knows that. The wisdom that can be learned from Nazi Germany is that when a country becomes unjustly militant against its neighbors, they must be stopped immediatly. No appeasment, no unnessarily long diplomatic efforts. Reaction must be immediate, and final.
America and Russia didnt hold back their nukes because they were scared that the UN would yell at them. They had restraint because they knew the other country would annihilate them. If either country actually believed their opponent was skiddish, the Cuban Missile Crisis, Vietnam War, Afghan War (Russia's, not ours) would have went a bit differently. Countries like Iraq, Iran, North Korea, etc. dont care about the UN because they know how useless it has become.
The only thing worse than committing an evil act is ignoring one.
--
Well which do you believe?
You can't really say we went to war for some benevolent ideology, and then say it probably wasn't for the reasons you are so proudly expressing...
I can and do believe both. There is nothing mutually exclusive about going to war for an ideology and going to war for money.
The United States does not go to war every time it finds a way to make money. There must also be a good reason for that war.
I understand that no matter how bad a regime is, the United States will probably not act if the regime does not affect us economically. It takes alot of money to fund a war, and money does not grow out of ideologies. Good things can happen in this world even if money was their primary motivator.
I employee a number of people at my company, and I pay well. My employee's lives are better because of their job, since they are rarely able to get similar paying jobs in the area with their experience/skills. But they only have a job because they can make me more money than I pay them. If my salesman cost me $5k a month, but only brought in $4k a month in sales, he would be out of a job. I consider myself a good boss, but I do not just hand out money.
The ends never justify the means
Are you serious? Is it 2am where you live, and is this just the rambling of someone who is tired? When you go to college you are spending about 4 years of your adult life virtually unemployed so that you can get a better job when you are done. You are a drain on the economy for 4 years, in the hopes that afterwards you will be able to better serve society. Most people think that the ends justify the means there.
Many people watch what they eat and/or exercize even if they do not particularly enjoy it. But they want to be in shape and live longer. So they must think that the ends justify the means.
The primary motivation is often monetary when you are talking about large entities such as governments or corporations. But since that is always constant, it is the secondary motivations that are important. A company exploiting workers to make more money is bad. A company that pays their workers well to increase loyalty and performance so that they can make more money is good. See the difference?
By that same logic, North Korea spending money on military while starving its citizens is bad. But America spending money on military to liberate other countries that we have other interests in is good.
--
Anyone who in this day and age still believes that humans did not evolve will never be convinced. They are incapable of realizing they are wrong if they havent already.
If this is a missing link, it creates 2 new ones. Instead of "what species comes between 'Ardipithecus ramidus' and 'Australopithecus afarensis'", you have both "what species comes between 'Ardipithecus ramidus' and 'Australopithecus anamensis'" and "what species comes between 'Australopithecus anamensis' and 'Australopithecus afarensis'".
We do not need these missing peices. It is always great to find more about evolution, but it really doesnt help prove it any more than the information we already had.
--
It is warfare, and it sucks, but it is how it needs to be done.
Ok. So, what's the next step? "It is warfare, and it sucks, but we need to torture people for information that may save our soldiers' lives - it is how it needs to be done".
You always have to find some way to strike a balance. Everything can be taken to extremes. It is good to eat fruits and vegetables, but if you only eat fruit then you will be very unhealthy. It is good to give your body rest, but it is bad to sleep 21 hours a day.
It is good to incarcerate POWs because some of them may be innocent, instead of kill them in the theatre of war. If there were some magical way to detect truth then we wouldnt have to make any innocent people suffer. But we sure cannot let all the POWs go free just because some of them might be innocent.
America did not want to be attacked at 9/11, and we did not want Iraq to invade Kuwait and then ignore the UN resolutions for over a decade. We are doing everything in our power to rectify mistakes done by both ourselves and other countries. And jailing POWs without a trial for a few years is not a terrible act given the circumstances.
--
In other words, "they" set US policy, "they" control the limits of our democracy, "they" have already won. :'(
That is such a rediculous statement that I wasnt even going to respond until another idiot actually decided to mod it insightful.
Does a murderer set our judicial policy because they are sent to jail or killed? His actions (killing someone) directly led to being executed, so they must have set our policy. That is nonsence. If it was up to me, I would like to never send anyone to jail and never impede on anyone's freedom. But as soon as someone decides to murder someone, we must act. We cannot just let a serial killer stay at large. The same goes for theft, fraud, etc.
Wars do not end overnight. WWI and WW2 took years. It is not unreasonable to keep POWs incarcerated for years without a trial process. And if we do find out that they were wrongly jailed, then they are let free. It has happened already where we have released people after a few years when we found out they were innocent. They were casualties of war, but lucky enough that they did not die like other innocent people in wartime.
We must refuse to play nice until everybody loves us again!
We are playing very nicely, and that is why it is taking so long. In World War II we just carpet bombed cities until they stopped fighting. In Japan we used incindiery bombs since we knew most of their homes were wooden and easily flamable. Im sure the insurgencies would be alot less if every time we were attacked, everyone in a 5 mile radius of the attack was killing in a carpet bombing mission. But we do not want unneccessary death, unlike the terrorists we are fighting. We think it is better to jail a few innocent people than to kill tens of thousands in the way war used to be faught.
--
Oh, yes. Someone else invaded Afghanistan and Iraq without international support and under the condemnation of the UN. And you just, uh, went along to help?
No, the above country you mentioned was the United States (and yes, I did get the sarcasm). But we still did not begin the hostilities. As far as Afghanistan, do you remember 9/11 at all? If the Taliban was not going to assist us in apprehending Al Qaeda then we needed to remove them from power to attack Al Qaeda.
And with Iraq, they began hostilities when they invades Kuwait. We were able to end the fighting very quickly based on Iraq's surrender, but they never followed through with their surrender. Saddam blaintantly showed how useless and irrelevent the U.N. was for over a decade, and the U.S. had enough of it. As far as I am concerned, weapons of mass destruction were barely even a consideration. We had plenty of other reasons to invade again. It is unfortunate that a President has to mislead the public because our population is so uneducated that they will not support the real reasons why we should have went to war.
The United States could not longer consider itself a moral country if it let the UN decide our policy. Letting countries commit genocide and oppress their own people should not be allowed. And the UN has shown that they do not have the will to stop immoral societies. The United States have done their fair share of evil acts in the past, such as wiping out the Native Americans, but we no longer tolerate our government committing genocide. The next step is to stop further atrocities in other parts of the world.
And the principles on which your country was founded be damned.
Our country was founded by rich men who didnt feel like having someone (ie Government) tell them what to do. They were not the moral giants that we think of them as today. It is similar to old men saying "back in my day, things were better." We like to think fondly of these men, but realize that they were not much different than politicians today. They had slaves and exploited the poor just like everyone else back then. They created the electoral system just so that they could control the election process in case the public was voting "correctly". John Adams passed many embarrassing acts, such as the Sedition Act that jailed newspaper editors that supported the Republican Party.
We live in a different world than it was back in the 1700s. I for one think that in our day and age we need to me MORE moral than our founding fathers. And that means not hiding from the problems in this world. Governments such as the Taliban and Saddam's Baath Party should not be allowed to exist. No government is perfect, but any rational person can see when a regime is simply evil.
I think that it is abhorrent that the world has allowed countries such as North Korea to oppress its people for so long without intervention. America should not be ashamed of going to war with Iraq, we should be ashamed of not going to war with countless other regimes over the past century that have done far worse than Saddam. The Iraq War is one shining example of a moral country finally standing up for their ideals. It is unfortunate that it was probably done more for money than for our ideals, but I doubt any major action in all of history has ever had anything but money as its primary driving force.
--
They will get justice. They will get it as soon as the insurgents stop fighting. Justice is a nice ideal, but when people are dying it has to be put in perspective. Is it justice if a soldier gets killed because the guys who are supposed to be watching his back are testifying in a courthouse in the green zone?
The convenience of our soldiers is ALOT more important than justice for captured POWs. It is warfare, and it sucks, but it is how it needs to be done.
--
But while we are still at war with Al Qaeda we do not need to determine for sure if they are guilty. We cannot just fly our soldiers back from the front lines every time the need to testify. Any trials do not need to occur until Al Qaeda officially says "We give up" and turn themselves in (and follows through with it).
Until then I am sure that innocent people are suffering along side the guilty. But it is no different than any other form of collateral damage in warfare. We did not start the hostilities, and we will continue to fight until our enemies give up.
If they want to keep fighting for generations, their "soldiers" will remain incarcerated for generations. Innocents get killed in war, and they also get jailed unfairly. As soon as the insurgents stop fighting then everyone will get the fair treatment that they deserve.
--
Do you want our military to bring soldiers back from the front lines for a trial for every single person they detain? While that might be nice, I would also like a million dollars a year in salary.
Neither is even close to reasonable.
--
When to quit tweaking the game. When to quit adding shit. When to quit revising it. When to quit the project period.
As I recall, these attributes are considered to be a good thing within the Open Source community.
Yeah, but think of where Linux would be if Linus was still working on it alone at home because it didnt quite have all of the features that he wanted. It wouldnt be nearly as far along.
--
Most programmers complain that people in management don't know anything about coding and that they are hindering development. But now you are saying that if talented people ever become management then the company will start spitting out poor quality products.
I may or may not be a great programmer, but my boss thinks that I am. He ended up making me President of his company so that he could take advantage of my help in running other programmers in the company. I may be twice as good as anyone else in the company, but I am far more useful managing programmers than actually coding myself. My past experience and knowledge of programming makes me far more competent to set schedules, timetables, distributing jobs, etc. than someone who has never worked as a programmer.
I think it is absurd to think that a company should keep their best people in low level coding positions and only let "management types" with no knowledge of what your company is producing make all of the decisions. I applaud IBM for expecting their best people to have good management and people skills. You may not like the products that IBM produces, but they dont seam to be going bankrupt from what I can tell.
--
Please say that you are kidding.
There's much more to life and human relationships than sexual expression.
I fully agree with that, but you definetly cannot take sexual expression away from any age group past puberty. Once a boy starts developing arm pit hair and voice starts cracking, they are ready for sexual expression. We have 2 choices: Have our 12 and 13 year old kids start having sex, or give them some other outlet.
We provide sports for kids so that they do not start beating each other up to establish alpha male status. Most bullies I knew (unlike what is shown in movies) were not the jocks. They were kids from low income families with no other outlet. Sports give males the ability to exhibit superiority over each other in a physical way without killing each other. Magazines such as Playboy (and now places like Playboy.com) give the same males an outlet for their sexual urges without resorting to having sex every other day.
I am not saying that porn should be the final answer. Dads should not skip the "Birds and Bees" talk and instead just hand their son a stack of Hustler magazines. But porn is not something to be avoided. It is actually healthy in a society that does not think children should be sexually expressing themselves at 13.
--
I do not see how seeing pornography is a problem at all for our youth. While 9 may be a little too young, I definetly do not see the problem with 11 or 12 year olds viewing it.
We allow our children to see violent imagery everywhere, from our games to the news. But we are so violently against sexual imagery. I know that as a child I was much more curious about girls and sex before I finally discovered both pornography and masturbation. I was able to be a functioning male teenager because I did not need to be overly preocupied with sex.
Would you rather more children start having sex at the age of 12? Or would you rather them find some pornographic pictures online and spend some "quality" time alone in their bedroom once every few nights? Humans are wired to start having sex long before 18, so we either give them an outlet or start having alot more teen pregnancies.
--
Wait a minute. This guy was not writing his senior year political science thesis, it was just a post to Slashdot. Asking for references is okay, but saying that his post is incomplete just because he didnt cite his sources is wrong. If everyone did that, my 30" monitor wouldnt be enough to see 2 posts on the same screen.
"The government does not intervene when there is a labor surplus"
Why not? Does it need to? What suggestions do you have?
He answered all of your questions in his post. He said that a free market corrects itself without intervention. He said that the government doesnt have to do anything except for to foster the free market system. It is okay to ask him to elaborate or give proof, but it was not an incomplete post. He couldnt possibly cover every single angle of the issue in one Slashdot post.
You can respond and ask questions without attacking his logical reasoning skills.
politicians attempt to damage"
Again, use of emotional 'damage' without any reasoning behind why it's 'damaging' and not, say, 'fixing'.
The reason he used the word "damage" instead of "fixing" is because he does not believe that it is fixing the problem. He believes that it is damaging our economy. And he has given reasoning for why, it is because it floods our workforce with extra workers that the workforce did not need. Which then increases unemployment or at least lowers wages.
You can say that he is wrong, but at least give examples of why. You attack him for not explaining himself, but you do not even try to explain yourself. You are simply attacking him with no basis for your arguments.
Sounds alot like the pot calling the kettle black.
--
You can still consider it a "free market" even if you have laws that inhibit immigration. Immigration laws have nothing to do with an American Free Market. It might inhibit a Global Free Market, but that isnt what the parent poster was referring to.
By your argument, to have a "truly free market" you would have to be allowed to kill your competition without legal recourse. If laws are in place to stop you from killing the competition, then it wouldnd be a free market.
--
Gambling is a game of luck
Sounds alot like someone who is horrible at gambling. While playing against "The House" is definetly mostly luck, playing against other gamblers is a game of skill. Luck exists, but that is true of anything. No one would accuse Michael Jordan of just being lucky since he didnt make 100% of his shots. No one said "that was just luck" whenever he made a jump shot.
--
Basically, these are assumptions, which fail to take into account numerous other factors. It's not science.
Your comments are purely based on anecdotal evidence; mostly your own experiences. That is what makes your comments meaningless. It is like saying I have a friend who was shot 10 times but lived, so bullets are not deadly. When in college I minored in history, and took three 300 level and two 400 level classes. None of them even approached any of my 200 level math classes in difficulty. I could probably pass most 400 level liberal arts classes if I signed up for one now (other than some Liberal Arts degrees such as Physics), but I doubt I could pass a 400 level AeroNautical Engineering class without taking alot of prerequisite classes first. There is some more anecdotal evidence for you since you love it so much.
Doing studies on thousands of individuals and normalizing the data and analyzing it IS SCIENCE. Your comments are not.
--
You talk about the difference between different tribes and the differences between Asian-Americans and other Asians, but those are the exact distinctions that should for the most part be disregarded. No one is rating cultures, they are rating genetic differences in races. There is a world of difference between an African and European Caucasion; and the difference between two Nigerian tribes. It is like comparing Black Labrador Retrievers and Chocolate Labs, and then saying it is similar to the difference between a Labrador and a Dalmation.
Human races, as far as we can tell, are much more similar to each other than dog races are. But there are real genetic differences. That is why black families do not have white babies. To think that we have all of these physical differences but no other internal genetic differences is very naive. Different races broke off from eachother for tens of thousands of years, more than enough time for very minor differences in intelligence to evolve. And the difference between a 100 and 80 IQ is very minor when you consider just how intelligent humans are over other species.
More relevantly, do you personally know anything about the University of Witwatersand?
While I have never visited the university, you can find quite a bit about a college simply from the internet. I can find a listing of all of their facilities and faculty members. They have biographies, along with research that they have done. I can even read their University Press from the internet. And I have yet to even find a non-religious based university that is not liberal. Colleges produce pseudo-intellectuals faster than they print diplomas.
You do sound like a not much travelled, pseudo intellectual racist looking for heavy credentialled cover
While I am not well traveled, I do have many friends that were born in other countries (and some that still live overseas). My family has a military backround and is very well traveled, although I was born with asthma and was black balled when I tried to sign up for the Marines. But I am not trying to sell you on any research that I have done, so my past has nothing to do with this argument. In fact, just having an emotional attachment to this issue (such as being an African yourself) clouds any objective judgment. It is similar to why psychologists are not supposed to have emotional feelings for their patients.
Regardless of what you believe, I have no racist leanings at all. While I have to admit I am mostly only attracted to Caucasian women, my sexual preferences do not mean that I have any negative feelings towards different races. I have many Asian friends and had many African American friends when in college. I am willing to accept my faults, the faults of my country, and any possible faults of my race in general. You do not see me complaining about how these IQ tests unfairly give Asian Americans an edge.
I am not even saying that Africans are on dumb. As you said in your post, IQ tests are not conclusive and do not rate all forms of intelligence. What they can show, however, is that there are probably differences in intelligence among different races. There could be certain tests that Africans do better than Europeans, I have simply not seen or heard of any tests that show this.
Not once did I uses words such as "inferior" or "smarter" in my entire post. I was simply stating that based on almost ALL available data, there seams to be an inherent difference in how different human races think. And so far no one has been able to show that it is purely cultural, in fact all available research is showing the exact opposite.
--
SO this is really a test that tests innate intelligence? really? So education/learning can't help to develop quick thinking or problem solving or visual recognition? How do you determine something is innate intelligence or a learned skill?
Like I said in my post, these were college educated students in South Africa. While their education might not be up to par with the U.S. or Europe (that is debatable with how bad our education system is), it isnt so bad that they arent picking up basic problem solving techniques.
And these tests were untimed, so quick thinking didnt play into it.
I could go on all day but it already reminds me of why I quit psychology, too many variables in the world.
So as soon as something becomes difficult you quit? Did you quit multi-variable calculus because it wasnt as simple as just using the power rule? Just because something is incredibly complex doesnt mean you shouldnt at least try to understand it.
These recent studies being done are mostly for the purpose of debunking the belief that some races may have different intelligence levels. It is very hard to believe, so most people assume it is wrong. Just because some American Revolutionary wrote down the words "All men are created equal" doesnt make it a scientific fact.
So far no one has actually been able to find any data that debunks it. They may do it, just like we may find out that there really is an alien race on Mars that we havent found yet. But until we find any actual data to lead us to a different conclusion, you should give at least some weight to the current conclusions.
--
Can you show me any evidence that hair colour - probably as significant a genetic trait as skin colour - has any other ramifications apart from likelihood of sunburn?
Are you honestly comparing hair color to racial differences? How many parents that both have red hair give birth to black haired children compared to the number of black couples who give birth to a white baby? Racial differences are alot deeper than the color of your skin.
College education perhaps not, but you'd have to be wilfully stupid not to see that early childhood training on puzzles wouldn't have a significant impact.
Like I said in my post, this study was done on college students in South Africa. These are not your poor homeless africans. They have had schooling, and have had access to plenty of stimuli similar to puzzles. Most of these studies are done on African college students because most of the studies are being done by African colleges.
> It is documented that Sub-Saharan Africans have an average IQ of about 70.
References, please.
The GP poster actually gave one reference to such studies in their post, so I hardly thought it was necessary to list them again. It is past midnight now so I do not feel like finding more, but do a google search with terms such as "IQ" & "Africa" and you will find studies on different countries and probably plenty of other links.
All I'll say is that I'm very glad you were on the other side of the atlantic, shooting and driving, when you were 11.
I grew up on a farm, so I started driving lawn mowers and tractors at the age of 8. I started driving trucks at about 10, when I could reach the pedals. People underestimate the abilities of children all of the time. And I was not an exception, most of my neighbors learned to drive at similar ages because we had access to relatively safe country roads.
I hope you'll stay there until you grow up.
This is just more nonsense that has nothing to do with the discussion at hand. Whether you could even find a general definition for what it means to be "grown up", it doesnt much to do with IQ scores among various races. Maybe your definition of "growing up" is to learn to ignore all available evidence and instead just believe whatever makes you feel better about yourself.
Make all of the excuses that you want about how all of these liberal studies still arent liberal enough for you. These are groups whose only goal is to try to debunk the belief that some races have lower IQs than others, but they have only reinforced the previous research.
If you are African, none of these comments are meant to be derogatory towards you. Remember these are just averages, it doesnt mean that any individual couldnt have a very high IQ.
--
but i think the only thing those surveys prove is that the method of calculating iq favors those who are educated
Racial biology has been proven a pseudo-science for quite some time
These beliefs are the exact kind of "politically correct" thinking that holds back research in the area of human intelligence. People are so adverse to labeling each other that they ignore real research that hopes to expand our knowledge of human intelligence. How can we possibly think that different human races could evolve to look so different but did not evolve differently at all internally?
The studies that the GP post mentioned are very, VERY numerous; but I will mention one here. A study done by the University of the Witwatersrand (a liberal college in South Africa) tested hundreds of students using Raven's Matrices. Raven's Matrices are the best known and most researched culturally-reduced tests that we have for rating IQ. They use diagrammatic puzzles with a missing part. You could hardly argue that any level of college education could help you find the missing peice of a puzzle.
It is documented that Sub-Saharan Africans have an average IQ of about 70. African university students scored an average of 84 on these tests, which is about 15 points higher than average which is the same as it is in America and Europe. Highly selected engineering students with extensive training in math and science scored about 103. This is also similar to Europe and America, where engineering students in college generally have IQs of about 15 points higher than liberal arts majors. This doesnt mean that their more intense schooling made them smarter, just that they generally must be smarter to even attempt a more intellectually intense career.
People think of sub-70 scores on an IQ test to mean mental retardation. That is only because among caucasions, people with such low IQ scores generally are retarded as a result of in utero complications. They also often have visible deficiencies in motor skills and speech. Sub-70 IQ South Africans are often technically normal, because that is not a very low score for them.
Thinking of it in terms of mental age, an adult with an IQ of 70 has the mental age of an 11 year old. I could drive, work on the farm, and shoot a gun before the age of 11. Having an IQ of 70 does not make you retarded, it is just that there is a strong correlation in America that people with low IQ are also retarded.
All of this culturally biased nonsense is just that: nonsense. Early IQ test were definetly culturally biased, but that has been fixed for the most part. Asians generally score better on American IQ tests than Americans do, so how could they possibly be culturally biased? And many tests, such as Raven's Progressive Matrices, have nothing to do with education level either.
You cannot fix a problem until you accept that it exists.
--
Surely, I've made clear what the morally right decision would have been.
No, you have only made it clear what YOU think the morally right decision is. I for one believe that you are wrong. If you actually believe that inaction is the best policy, then go ahead and close your eyes and hope the problem goes away.
I for one think that we should be actually trying to help the Chinese population instead of ignoring them.
--
I dont really think that the increase in violence in our society has anything to do with us glorifying it. I think it has everything to do with the information age, and by that I include television and other forms of media that even today are increasing their immersion into our society. The wealth of information that is at our finger tips from the internet to the news has caused a desire for realism that just started emerging over the past few decades.
It is our constant need for realism in our media and more specifically in our entertainment that is causing this violence. And it isnt because we like violence, it is because the world is violent. To accurately depict reality, many forms of media must be VERY violent. We no longer accept propoganda filled films that paint war as a heroic endeavor where the heroes never die and there are no blood and guts in the attractive hero's hair at the end of a battle.
The Vietnam War was the first time that our society really started to remember how "graphic" the world really is. America is so sheltered from the violence that is known in other parts of the world that we forget how wonderful it is that we can go to work every day without worrying about stepping on a land mine. Sure we have our own crime, but I doubt many people living in some African countries would give up the opportunity to trade places with us.
Even during the Vietnam War, we were still reluctant to accept the world for what it really is. It took a long time for our media to accuratly depict the world around us. But today we expect realistic movies and games. Sure there can be demons and angels and monsters, but the movie must be believable once you accept that these things exist in the scope of that particular movie.
Sure there are movies like "Kill Bill" that push the edge as far as gore and violence go, but there are always areas of media that push the envelope. Movies are effected by our culture as much if not more than movies effect us. Like you said in your post, movies like "Rambo" were at the extreme in the 80s. But now that all movies are at least as realistically depicted as Rambo, movies must go a little farther to be extreme enough for a certain audience.
Violence is not a good thing, but it should not be avoided. America is still too isolated from the world; our media is one of the few outlets that show us the things that many conservative people dont want us to see. I am not liberal by any means, but I also do not think we should shield ourself from reality just because it makes us feel better. I dont think we should ever stop trying to shock the public with images from media such as war movies. Maybe we will finally stop thinking issues like abortion are such a big deal when there are countries out there committing genocide.
--